BID / ASK

The Bid is the price at which a broker will buy your current day trading position from you.  The Ask is the price at which the broker will sell you the position you require.

The gap between the bid and the ask depends on many and varied factors, such as how much liquidity the instrument has, how volatile the general day trading market is, the ratio of day trading buyers vs sellers and so on.

This is why prices you see will have 2 numbers which you can see on your day trading computer - for example the price of X might be quoted as 110 - 112. This means that if you want to day trade X and want to BUY a single share, it will cost you 112 dollars, but if you want to SELL a share, you will only get 110 dollars for it.

In the morning papers, usually only 1 price is shown, and this is the MID price (the middle between the bid and ask).

This difference between bid and ask is the spread and it is kept as profit by the broker/specialist handling the transaction. In truth, the spread goes to pay a number of fees in addition to the broker’s commission.